Artist Statement

–Each material has its own message– Frank Lloyd Wright (1928)

Christian Faur Artist Statement

I am a maker driven by curiosity, exploration, and experimentation. My training in physics provided tools for problem-solving and visualization, teaching me to see solutions first and work backwards to the structures needed to support them. This nonlinear way of thinking has become fundamental to my practice.

I work across many forms: hand-cast encaustic crayons, shredded texts, human hair, projection design, robotics, and AI-driven performance. What connects these disparate materials is a persistent question: how can medium and message reinforce each other so that the final work becomes stronger than either could be alone? The materials I choose carry cultural weight. Crayons hold associations of childhood and play. Religious texts carry centuries of meaning. Human hair carries the body and its histories. The material isn’t neutral; it speaks, and my job is to listen and then direct that conversation.

My crayon works function as expanded pixels. I cast wax in precise colors, following custom digital mapping systems that translate photographic information into this unique geometry. I then stack thousands of crayons so their tips form photorealistic images. From a distance, viewers see a photograph or painting. As they approach, the image dissolves into what I call random crayon data, pure matter. I’m hoping for an “aha” moment where the viewer sees the work as something totally different and makes the connection between the material and the message.

I have also developed a color alphabet, assigning each letter a unique hue. This system grew from my own dyslexia and a desire to reimagine color as a form of communication. In creating it, I realized I had built a gendered language: because colorblindness affects men at far higher rates than women, roughly one in twelve men cannot fully access this alphabet, while most women can. This unintentional exclusion raised questions about power and knowledge that continue to inform my thinking about language.

The structures and systems that underpin the natural world remain invisible to most of us, yet they shape everything we see and experience. My work attempts to make these hidden scaffolds visible, whether through the pixel-by-pixel construction of an image, the encoding of language into color, or the intertwining of material and meaning. Each piece is an invitation to look closer, to discover the complexity beneath the surface, and to participate in the act of making sense.